The Agri World Farm Hand
by MA7
Summary: The life of a worker on an Imperium Agri World
1. Chapter 1

The Agri World Farm Hand

Chapter 1(farm)

Pablo Fernandez squinted in the harsh light reflecting off the canal water. The worker transport boat was rocking and swaying as it chugged along the irrigation canal, sending silver carp leaping out of the water as it passed by.

The boat was heavily overcrowded with over 100 migrant workers, and had a full crew of further migrant workers shovelling farm waste into its biomass gasifier furnace, keeping the crude carbon monoxide fuelled gas engine supplied with a steady stream of fresh fuel gas.

The boat was local made, a crude barge with a crude engine of greased cast steel. Here on the Agri World of Yambini, most everything was a crude and labor intensive affair. If it wasn't made local then it simply cost too much to buy on this planet.

The crowd of migrants huddled together for warmth on the crowded boat, it was just past sunrise and the cold was bitter to these migrants. It was only 25 degrees centigrade right now, utterly freezing to migrants from a much hotter planet.

Pablo and his fellow workers all hailed from the barely habitable hive world of Mia Rho, a planet with out of control global warming from way too much pollution. The average midday temperature back home on Mia Rho was 60 degrees centigrade, and 30 degrees was considered freezing cold in that place. The ecosystem had all but collapsed, much of the economy had quickly followed, and now over a trillion migrants were leaving the planet to find any work they could get.

Pablo had been on the planet Yambini for a few weeks now, but he still couldn't handle the cold weather here. The sun was so much brighter here than on the pollution choked surface of Mia Rho, but it was colder than he could have imagined possible, it only got to 40 degrees at the hottest time of day here!

The air here was so fresh and clean, no smog to be seen anywhere. The lack of the warm comforting smog gave this chilly air a stark quality that Pablo didn't like, it was sterile air, dead air, just cold and totally clean. He didn't like it at all.

The boat chugged sluggishly up the wide canal, continuing to spook the hated silver carp into leaping out of the water to hit them in the faces. They all disliked these jumping fish, they were dangerous, always smacking people in the face and covering them with slime, just beastly animals these fish.

Many cold fish in the face later, the unhappy migrant workers disembarked from the barge at a dock next to today's farm. Every day they worked a different farm, picking crops all day long, hard hard work but very much appreciated by these poverty stricken migrants.

The 100 or so workers walked from the dock to assemble on a bare dirt track around a parked wood gas powered farm truck with a white skinned man leaning against it.

"Hop in," the man said, pointing to the tray at the back of the truck.

The migrants stoically clambered inside the back of the truck as best as they could, but their wasn't room for all inside. Pablo and many of the others were forced to hang off the outside of the truck as best as they could.

When all were more or less aboard, the white guy entered the drivers seat and very loudly put the chugging gas engine into gear. The truck lurched awkwardly forward, and then became more smooth in its travel as it started to gain momentum.

Pablo looked around at the scenery as the crude gas truck chugged along, and saw only endless rows of fruit trees, miles and miles of orange trees, apple trees, and many other varieties of fruit trees. It all needed to be harvested, and even 100 workers would not be able to harvest so much in a day. The farm was no doubt getting more than just one batch of workers for today's harvest, probably thousands of workers would be working this farm today.

The truck slowed down and was put out of gear, these wood gas engines could not turn off their gas supplies until the gasification fires in the fuel furnaces burned out, and had to keep running even when not in use, simply idling in neutral when parked. It was not at all efficient, but at least these sort of engines could be powered by almost any flammable biomass.

The mass of workers disembarked from the idling truck and found another white guy waiting for them next to a huge pile of work gear they would be using, like ladders and fruit sacks and pruning shears and the like.

"Kay boys, y'all know what to do, get harvesting," the new white guy said stoically. Really he didn't have to tell them how to do what they did every day anyway.

Pablo and the others collected their work gear as the truck driver shovelled fresh wood chips into the gasification furnace of his truck, the loud grinding gear change could then be heard as the truck was put into gear again and driven off to presumably get more workers from the dock. With gear in hand the migrants immediately went to the fruit trees and scaled ladders to get at the fruit.

Picking fruit is extremely repetitive and tedious work, just maddeningly boring work. Pablo had a specially designed fruit sack hanging from the front of his chest, and he soon filled it with 20 pounds of fruit before climbing down the ladder to empty the sack in a waiting trailer.

Again and again he filled his sack, up and down the ladder carrying 20 pounds of weight in the freezing cold 30 degree centigrade air. His arms ached in weird places like his forearms, from repetitive straining, his legs and back throbbed with cramps and aches, but he just kept working.

He got paid not by the hour, but based on how much he harvested. The more he harvested each day, the more he got paid. He could average a good 9 credits per hour if he worked as hard as possible, being lazy would just lose him money. Honest work farming, you get what you give.

Up and down the ladder he went, and the white guy stood by the trailer with a clipboard and pen, marking off each time a worker emptied a full sack into the trailer. Each worker wore a vest with a number on it, letting the supervisor identify them by their vest number. It was a good system.

Before long the chugging sound of the truck engine could be heard approaching, and another 100 migrant workers soon joined them in the fruit harvest. This happened many times over the next hour, until workers were everywhere and the harvest was getting picked much faster.

The sun slowly creeped over the sky, and the mass of workers stripped the trees of fruit very quickly now, moving from one row of trees to the next, stripping the branches bare of their bounty of fruits. It was just endless repetition up and down the ladders with sacks of fruit, nothing to break the monotony of the work.

As they worked the workers helped themselves to fruit. They didn't get meal breaks, didn't get meals, but they were permitted to eat as much fruit as they liked as they worked so long as it didn't reduce the harvests too much. It was the one perk of this extremely dull job.

Pablo and the others were given access to a water keg and disposable paper cups as well, to keep them hydrated as they worked. They also paused periodically to piss at the base of a fruit tree. A few even took a dump at the base of the trees, the supervisors always gave them toilet paper when needed, the farmers certainly didn't mind the free fertiliser for their fruit trees.

Hour passed hour, one tree after another was stripped of fruit, and the work just ground on and on. Pablo got a thorn in his leg, someone else got stung by a local insect, really nothing more interesting than the odd work mishap occurred.

The sun gradually went down, and it got too dark to work. The workers were simply given tiki lamps full of plant oils to light and impale into the ground for lighting, and the harvest just went on until it got too cold for the Mia Rho workers to continue. Some of the harvest was lost, but the workers could not go on in the cold 20 degree centigrade night air! Too cold!

Pablo was shivering violently all the way back to the truck. He received his pay with chattering teeth, and then climbed up on the truck for the journey back to the boat. The exhaust from the truck was deliciously warm as it wofted over him in the night air.

At the dock the migrant workers gathered frantically around a number of burning braziers, full of merrily burning apple tree branches, set up for their comfort by the benevolent farmer who owned the farm, in thanks for a fine day's work. The people of Yambini were very fond of inexpensive labourers, and did little things like this to make the migrants a little bit more comfortable. It was lovely.

After warming up in front of the fires for a few minutes, the migrants felt strong enough to embark into the waiting passenger barges, and huddled together onboard for the journey back to town.

Pablo was snugly located right in the middle of the huddling mass, and it made it slightly more bearable as the barge chugged off, down the irrigation canal system that doubled as the primary transportation route on this region of Yambini.

A few damn silver carp still managed to leap clear over the crowd to swat Pablo in the face. He cursed loudly as the freezing fish slime covered his face. The entire crowd of people was cursing as leaping fish hit them in the face, the irrigation canals were infested with these easily spooked silver carp, they were a real nuisance! Especially when you were already freezing cold and sore from work!

Many many slapping slimy fish later, and the boat pulled up at the dockside in the town of Jil, the biggest settlement in the immediate area. Jil was just a country town, but it contained enough temporary accommodation for the many thousands of migrant workers who were living in town during this harvest season.

The migrants all fled through the night air to the warmth of their lodgings, not stopping or slowing until they were all huddled in front of fireplaces in their rental rooms.

Pablo shared his own room with nine other men. They each had a bunk in one of the 5 bunk beds in the room, each had a suitcase for their stuff, and shared a bathroom with 30 other people on this floor of the small bed and breakfast they lived in. At the moment all the men were huddled around the single fireplace in the room, stacking it up with a pile of wood to get the room to a pleasant 40 or more degrees for the night.

It took a while but they got the fire blazing hot enough to really get comfortable, and they finally relaxed for the first time that day. They had each taken a pound of fruit home with them for their dinner that night, and had a meal of assorted fruits, mostly apples and oranges and pears.

After dinner Pablo bathed in the bathroom, enjoying a nice hot shower that took away some of the aches from today.

That night Pablo slept peacefully, so tired from the day of work that he dropped off to sleep as soon as he got into bed. It was a hard life, but the sleep each night was wonderful.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2(farm)

Pablo and the other migrant workers watched stoically as the boat crew cursed and swore in a variety of languages. The passenger barge was moored at the main dock in Jil, and it's crude carbon monoxide gas engine was partially disassembled. The barge crew was currently torn between saying respectful prayers to the machine spirit of the boat, and saying far less respectful words to each other.

This might cause the migrant workers a significant delay in getting to work on time today...

"Fucking hell! Hand me the BIG wrench you idiot!" The barge captain could be heard shouting at his migrant worker crew from somewhere underneath the bulky engine.

"This one boss?" A Mia Rho voice replied questioningly.

"Yeah, give it," the captain's voice answered from under the machinery.

The sounds of the wrench turning nuts and bolts could then be heard for a minute before the captain spoke again.

"Ok it's loose and about to drop, grab hold of it and get the winch on it. Yes you got it, now get ready to swing it out." The captain's voice said.

There was a tinkering sound and then the entire side of the engine fell away sideways, supported by a crude swinging crane arm with a winch. The insides of the engine cylinders were now completely exposed, and they were all badly clogged up with thick black tar from the carbon monoxide smoke that fuelled them...

Pablo and the others murmured in dismay, they would miss half the morning before this mess was fixed!

"Quit the bellyaching, I got a little trick for this." The captain told the passengers gruffly.

"Hand me that canister of solvent and that kettle, you lot fire up the cooking stove. Some boiling solvent will melt this gunk like butter," the captain proclaimed confidently.

The passengers exchanged glances and then as one they fled away from the boat. Solvent mixed with fire was a suicidal idea, this might end in an explosion of burning solvent spraying over everyone. Just nope, Pablo didn't need a mornings work badly enough to justify being burned alive!

"It's safe you cowards! I did this plenty of times!" The captain called at them reassuringly.

Pablo and the others halted a safe distance from the barge and watched pensively. Would this really work?

The captain was pouring extremely flammable plant based solvent into a brass kettle. The crew were looking ready to jump overboard, but stood their ground as the captain carefully placed the kettle over a burning cooking fire in a little wood stove on the deck of the barge.

To Pablo's amazement there was no explosion, no out of control fireball, just a calmly heating kettle. For a few minutes everyone stood poised for a bang, but nothing happened, and soon the kettle was whistling at the boil.

The captain removed the kettle and gingerly carried it to the tar clogged engine. The passengers edged close as they dared to watch, and saw the captain very carefully pouring boiling solvent over the tar in measured amounts.

The tar simply dissolved away like snow under piss, liquefying instantly as soon as the bubbling hot solvent soaked it. Within 30 seconds the innards of the engine were all gleaming raw steel, totally clean!

The floor under the engine was now covered with a runny black liquid. The hot solvent in the puddle was rapidly evaporating away in the open air however, and the liquid was becoming less runny by the second, becoming viscous tar once more. The captain waited for the puddle to thicken to nearly solid and then shovelled it up into a metal barrel half full of solid tar.

The captain used the last of the boiling solvent in the kettle to clean the tar off his shovel and other tools, and gave the floor a quick wipe down with the last of the solvent soaked into a disposable rag on the end of a mop.

Pablo and the others felt rather foolish now and hastened to get back on the barge. They felt rather ashamed of themselves.

"A lot of people run first time they see the solvent trick, don't feel bad boys." The captain encouraged them placatingly.

The crew soon had the engine back together again and started fiddling with the gasification furnace. The furnace had been burning the entire time during the repairs, but the carbon monoxide smoke it produced had been vented out of an emergency vent pipe topped with a guttering oil torch, igniting the highly poisonous carbon monoxide into the much safer carbon dioxide in a controlled burn. Now this fuel smoke had to be sent back into the engine.

The captain directed the crew to let a tiny amount of carbon monoxide into the engine, not too much but enough to get it idling, and gave the order for 4 men to pull very hard on a large pull chord to turn over the engine. As the 4 men pulled, 4 others lit sacred candles and prayed invocations to the sacred spirit of the engine. Even crude machines like this were considered sacred in the Imperium of Man, and the machine spirits demanded appropriate respect.

The men heaved on the chord as the others prayed, and the engine made a few halfhearted chugs before dying.

"Again!" The captain ordered.

The men tried again, and again... and again.

This crude engine had no starter motor. It didn't even have a battery to store power. The spark plugs only fired if the engine was turning fast enough to spin a little generator connected to the engine by a rubber belt thing on spinning wheels. Only muscle power could start this engine, but turning it over fast enough to sustain the combustion was extremely hard work.

Pablo and about 15 other passengers grabbed hold of the pull chord to help, and together the mass of men got the engine chugging by itself with a single great heave.

Everyone onboard cheered and piously praised the machine spirit of the engine, and the crew quickly had all of the carbon monoxide diverted into the engine to get it chugging at full power. The barge undocked from the dockside and the engine was eased into gear. They were now chugging down the irrigation canal and picking up speed.

They would be late to work but not by too much, the boiling solvent trick really had saved them all a lot of time. This captain really knew his stuff!

The trip was long but smooth, with only the jumping fish to cause any disruption to the smooth monotony. The migrant workers passed the time by chatting as they huddled together for warmth in the chilly air.

Today they would be harvesting melons, various different types of melons, they were not told the types, just that it was melons. This was bad news, melons were always hard work to harvest. They were the biggest and heaviest type of fruit Pablo knew of, but they grew right on the ground where you had to stoop and bend right down to pick them.

The constant stooping down and standing up with a heavy melon in hand, it did murder to the back and muscles. Doing a 10 or more hour shift harvesting melons was hellishly hard on the human body. The back always ached terribly for many days after harvesting melons, they really were the worst.

To take his mind off the misery of knowing he would pick melons, Pablo squinted at the surrounding countryside as the others chatted.

The land of this area was extremely flat and level. Long ago in history this land had all been underwater, far out into an extremely shallow part of the sea. The area of shallow sea had then been silted up by a geologically recent river delta, pushing the coast hundreds of miles out into the sea where it hit the steep side of a continental shelf and became deep.

Pablo didn't know the entire history of this planet, even the locals probably didn't know the whole history. This naturally reclaimed land had obviously had silt dumped all over it for longer than humans had been around, and had presumably originally been full of shallow meandering rivers and shallow swamps and drier bits when humans found it, the way that such deltas are prone to do.

The humans had very clearly cut an intricate system of irrigation canals into this entire region, draining away the swamps and watering all areas equally, and the now dried and exposed swamp bed soils provided extremely rich farm land.

This very flat region of former sea extended for many hundreds of miles, and formed an area the size of a moderately large country. It was known as the "fruit basket" of Yambini, and grew predominantly fruit, rather than the grains and livestock that the rest of the planet more focused on.

As an Agri World, Yambini dedicated pretty much it's entire surface to producing food of some sort. Every square mile of dry land, except for a few places like mountains and polar ice, had at least some type of agriculture going on.

The oceans and seas were likewise not wasted, and were dedicated to fish farming, shellfish farming, seaweed farms, and the like. This place produced food on an astonishing scale, to meet the insane demands of hungry hive worlds.

But for all of this, Pablo wasn't seeing anything terribly high tech in the surroundings. Candles and oil burners were used rather than light bulbs, which were rare and expensive here. Flammable carbon monoxide smoke, obtained from the low oxygen burning of local biomass in crude onboard gasification furnaces, powered the local vehicles rather than refined higher tech fuels.

Windmills and water wheels provided mechanical power here rather than electrical power, except in a very few cases, and the local manufacturing industry was barely more than a bunch of basically blacksmiths, albeit with just enough knowledge to make stuff like engines and generators and spark plugs with extremely primitive methods.

Imperial tech did still exist, all of the local military forces had lasguns and a few other modern weapons, it was just mostly limited to military technology. The entire Imperium of Man was like this more or less, they didn't have the resources to have both modern weapons AND modern civilian technology, so they focused all available resources on military production, and left the civilians to make do with whatever they could get...

As if to prove this point, a squadron of high tech Thunderbolt fighter aircraft roared overhead at extremely high altitude on some military exercise. The civilians made do with mostly late 19th century technology to make all those high tech bombs and planes possible.

Closer to the ground Pablo spotted a medieval type castle next to the irrigation canal, local made from crude stonework. Soldiers with lasguns sleepily stood guard at the battlements, eyeing the boat traffic for anything that looked suspicious. Even a laid back Agri World like Yambini was like a demilitarised zone.

The barge got closer to the castle, and soldiers in a relatively high tech military patrol boat moved towards them, spooking a large school of leaping silver carp in the process. The soldiers in the boat had military radios and other unimaginable gear, not to mention the lasguns they carried, and Pablo felt fierce pride that the civilian sacrifices were providing these heroes with the equipment they needed.

The soldiers checked the papers of the barge captain, and then inspected the passengers and crew for any evidence of mutations. They didn't like the look of one of the passengers, and arrested the man for questioning. Pablo never saw the man again... maybe he had traveled to a different town after the questioning was over?

The soldiers let the barge pass after detaining the man they didn't like the look of, and the barge chugged along past the castle and further up the long irrigation canal.

One type of fruit crop gave way to another as the barge chugged past. Fruit as far as the eye could see. The crops then became a massive open field of melons, and Pablo groaned. Looks like they were finally arriving.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3(farm)

Pablo Fernandez's back ached terribly as he lifted a 90 pound bright blue Kepler melon up off the ground, straining to put it gently onto the slowly moving harvest wagon.

Kepler melons were an alien fruit that humans domesticated over 30 thousand years ago, originally from one of the so called Kepler planets according to legend. The melons were over 95 percent water and very very soft. They burst open extremely easily if handled too roughly, and spoiled quickly if burst, so had to be handled with the uttermost care.

Pablo had a special hatred for harvesting Kepler melons. They were without doubt one of the most fragile fruits he had ever worked with, and yet they were so heavy that handling them gently enough was extremely difficult.

Even worse was how insanely expensive these fragile melons were. Kepler melons were notoriously fussy about the soil conditions they would grow in, and if the soil magnesium concentration was more than 1 tenth of 1 percent higher or lower than the soil of their tiny natural habitat the damn things refused to grow!

Only a few planets in the entire Imperium of Man had the right soil to grow Kepler melons, and even then it was usually only a tiny area of those planets that had this perfect soil. Even on their home planet Kepler melons were apparently only found in a single valley, their native range was barely 10 miles it was said.

Well this made Kepler melons extremely rare, and this rarity made them very expensive. Only a few farms on Yambini had the right soil for them, and these few farms grew nothing else.

This was one such farm, a few thousand acres where the soil magnesium concentration was in this absolutely precise range, and the family who owned this farm was rich by local standards. According to rumour the head of this family could afford to keep 25 extremely beautiful wives, all for himself! Such wealth!

Pablo wondered what it would be like to have 25 wives. He figured that it was probably a mixed blessing, the man would probably have to put up with 25 times as much nagging as other men, Pablo didn't think that he would be able to cope with that.

At the moment Pablo would be happy if he had even just one woman to call his own. He hadn't been with a woman yet, and to be honest he wasn't even completely sure what he would do with her if he got one. He knew that it had something to do with private parts, but he wasn't completely sure what went in where, people didn't discuss such taboo things!

As much as women were a mystery to Pablo, they sure were nice to look at.

Pablo put women from his mind and focused on what he was doing. These Kepler melons would cost him his pay today if he broke too many.

Kepler melons broke so easily that even the most dedicated picker would break at least one or two each harvest, especially if they were overripe. These fruits were evolved to split apart and release their seeds, it's what the fruit wanted to do. Sometimes the fruit just got the better of even the most careful picker.

The farmers understood this, and were generally reasonable about it, but only up to a point. Break too many and they will send you home without pay for the day. Kepler melons were far too expensive for a day labourer to ever afford to reimburse the cost of one, so the farmers didn't even bother asking you to pay, they just threw you out.

The one good thing about Kepler melons was that if you went the whole day without breaking too many you got 3 times your usual pay, as an incentive to really try your best. Pablo could really use the money, he earned so little.

Pablo lifted up another 90 pound Kepler melon, ignoring the terrible pain in his back, and placed it very gently on the carefully padded harvesting wagon.

The wagon itself was swarming with workers who carefully wrapped up each melon in padded material and stacked them very carefully at the other end of the wagon. The wagon was over twenty meters wide and designed solely for harvesting Kepler melons. It was pulled along very slowly by a fancy imported tractor that ran on refined imported fuel, much more reliable than local engines.

It had only been a few hours but Pablo was already exhausted. The work was so heavy that Pablo wasn't even feeling the cold today, he was almost feeling warm right now! His back was hurting terribly, and he was almost ready to collapse from exertion.

Pablo dropped to his knees, panting with exhaustion. He could not go on lifting these 90 pound melons without a rest. He wasn't allowed to eat these expensive fruits, so he was getting weak with hunger now.

The supervisor noticed Pablo was at the end of his strength, and told him to trade places with a man on the wagon. Pablo shakily tried to climb onto the wagon but was obviously too weak to do this either so the supervisor stopped him.

"Go to the dock and buy yourself some lunch from the cook barge, you can't work like this," the supervisor ordered.

"Yes boss," Pablo said weakly and shakily walked toward the dock area a few hundred metres away.

Pablo was not alone in walking to the docks, the work crews were haemorrhaging weak and shaky workers, heading to get some food. Harvesting Kepler melons really took it's toll.

Ahead of them was already harvested fields, which eventually gave way to a dirt track along the canal waterfront and a wooden dock area for boats to moor. Moored at this dock was a small barge with a canopy roof and a lot of smoking stove chimneys. From this barge came the delicious smell of frying fish.

Pablo increased his speed at the smell of food, and soon arrived joining the end of a line of workers waiting to be served.

The cook barges were mostly staffed by local women, usually older women, but sometimes they would have a teenage daughter helping them. Pablo and every other man in the line were eagerly peering around for a teenage girl to look at, they wouldn't touch her, they just liked to look.

Pablo was thrilled to see a pimple covered chubby white face of a rather overweight local teenage girl! She was sweating profusely as she stood frying fish at a stove, with an extremely overheated and uncomfortable look on her face, with huge dark sweat patches soaking through her conservative long sleeved blue dress, especially around her armpits and back.

Pablo and the others admired this young woman, enjoying looking at her as she wiped a sleeve across her sweating forehead. She was mid to late teens, at that age when teenage girls become especially pleasant to look at, and Pablo felt a wave of pleasure from looking at her.

Pablo had wanted to look at her for longer but far too soon he found himself at the front of the line facing the crude wooden counter.

"Yep she's a girl, you gonna look at my daughter all day or you gonna buy something?" an irritated sounding older female voice snapped impatiently.

Pablo stopped looking at the interesting teenage girl and turned his gaze to see the irritated face of a much older woman. This woman had deep wrinkles and grey hair, and Pablo didn't get the same rush of pleasure from looking at this woman. He fumbled for his money and asked for a meal.

The barge had only one thing on the menu, fried local fish. The hated jumping fish that filled the canals were abundant and free for the taking, and local widows and their daughters had taken to catching these fish to sell cooked to farm labourers for a meagre income.

Yambini was a man's world, the work was mostly reserved for men, and the women were expected to get married and be supported by their husbands. The women who lost their husbands usually got remarried as soon as possible, unless they were too old, the older widows had more difficulty in life, and were forced to find work like this.

The teenage girl on the cook barge would be married off as soon as she came of age and found a husband, that's the only reason she was here. Any brothers she had would be already working on the local farms, but until she got married she would help her mother make a living cooking fish.

Pablo handed over a crumpled credit note, and the old woman gave him fried fish on a disposable paper plate. Pablo took his meal and stood in an out of the way spot with a good view of the teenage girl, and ate his food with his hands.

Pablo lingered for a little while after eating to keep gazing at the girl. He worked such long hours that all the young women in the town were in their homes for the night by the time he usually got home. It had been such a long time since he had seen many girls, so he enjoyed admiring them in the rare instances that he got to see one.

Pablo reluctantly stopped looking at the girl, and unhappily returned to harvest the heavy Kepler melons. Given the choice between lifting 90 pound melons and looking at a girl, he would gladly take the second option. Unfortunately however, he needed the money.

The day was long and horrible, filled with terrible pain. Apart from occasionally visiting the cook barge to buy food and admire the girl, the day was utterly unpleasant.

It was late at night and freezing cold when he finished working. He felt absolutely terrible all over, his back especially was killing him. He had definitely earned the triple pay he had made today!

Pablo rushed to the dock to see if he could see the girl again, but was disappointed to find that the cook barge had already left for the night.

Pablo frowned unhappily as he waited for his own barge home, his disappointment made his pain and misery feel even worse. He felt utterly sorry for himself all the way home.


End file.
